Fall 2013 Newsletter Rapport - Communication - University of South

Rapport

The Department of Communication An electronic newsletter for alumni and friends

Volume 7, Number 1

November 2013

In this Issue Settling in with the Chair Checking in with Ken

Settling in with the Chair Carolyn Ellis Professor and Chair

Graduate student news

Faculty notebook Alumni news & notes News from the Undergraduate Director

Dr. Carolyn Ellis welcomes you to the Department of Communication

News from the Graduate Director New Faces In Conversation: Elizabeth Bell Dissertation Snapshots Bits and bytes Contact Us We want you to establish Rapport. Please let us add you to the distribution list for future issues of Rapport.

Visit Us on the web Rapport Archives

NCA Party Invite

Editors: Brad Stager and Lisa Spinazola

USF Communication Rapport

Greetings. I am now quite comfortable in “Ken’s chair” and appreciating the view from the big office. It has been quite a transition into administration from my lone scholar/teaching life of the last thirty-some years. But I’m finding I actually enjoy it (well, maybe not all the bureaucratic snafus). (pg. 34)

Checking in with Ken Communication Emeritus Ken Cissna was busy professionally in the months immediately following his retirement at the end of 2012. In February, he was asked to assume responsibility for a spring semester graduate seminar on Interpersonal Communication at the University of Southern Mississippi. He took over the class from USM's Dick Conville who was recovering from surgery. He flew to Hattiesburg twice—for his first class and the last one. (pg. 35)

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Graduate student news In yet another exciting year of graduate school, we celebrated the completion of degrees, a new cohort, and, of course, the connections we continue to build.

Communication Day - April 19, 2013 This year's Communication Day was a huge success. Kicking off the day was the Seventh Annual Speak Out event, organized by Jennifer Whalen. Six students from the Public Speaking course (SPC 2608) competed for cash prizes.

Maddie Southard’s student, Rufus Beacham (shown below), won the first place award. Special thanks to the Speak Out judges: Abraham Khan, Mahuya Pal, and Lori Roscoe.

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The Performance Showcase The Performance Showcase immediately followed the Speak Out and featured the talents of several graduate and undergraduate students who provided an enjoyable hour of entertainment.

Grazier Lecture Our invited speaker was Ronald C. Arnett (Ph.D., Ohio University, 1978), who is chair and professor of the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies and the Henry Koren, C.S.Sp., Endowed Chair for Scholarly Excellence at Duquesne University. He also is the editor of the Review of Communication and executive director of the Eastern Communication Association. Dr. Arnett’s talk was entitled "Doing Communication Ethics in an Age of Diversity: Modernity as a Moral Cul de Sac." His address relied principally on his latest book, Communication Ethics in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt's Rhetoric of Warning and Hope, which critiques the secular trinity of modernity: efficiency, individual autonomy, and progress. The presentation discussed the necessity for this critique and offered a communicative alternative.

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Comm Prom Magdalene Southard; Barney Downs Spirit Award: Tasha Rennels; GTA Outstanding Teaching Award: Chris Patti; Bochner Award for the Outstanding Doctoral Student: Patrick Dillon. Then the Graduate Communication Association presented several awards, which recognized Jane Jorgenson, who received both the faculty HUB Award as well as the Faculty Recognition Award; Kristen Blinne received the GCA Outstanding Peer Mentor Award; Tasha Rennels received the GCA Outstanding Departmental Service Award; and Nicholas Riggs received the GCA Outstanding Community Engagement Award. After the Grazier Lecture and round table, faculty, staff, and students put on their leather vests, tie-dye t-shirts, floral dresses, miniskirts, and other 60s-inspired apparel before heading to the top floor of USF’s brand new Interdisciplinary Science Building for the annual Comm Prom. The evening featured a variety of delicious appetizers, an open bar, dancing, and live 60s music featuring the talents of some of our very own, including Summer Cunningham and friends, Eric Eisenberg, Heather Curry, and Ciara Curry.

The newly elected officers of the Graduate Communication Association were acknowledged - the new Executive Board consists of Co-Presidents - Jennifer Whalen and Joanna Bartell; Treasurer - Carolyn Day; Secretary - Krystal Bresnahan; Social Chair Lisa Spinazola; and Social Media Chair Nicholas Riggs. At the end of the award ceremony, the dancing continued. Who knew students - and faculty - could get down like that!

Carolyn Ellis thanked everyone for coming and then presented a list of accomplishments of faculty and students. [All these can be found on this website.] As well, she listed 53 publications of the graduate students, all occurring during 2012 or after. Quite an achievement! She also mentioned the 2012 graduates: David Steinweig, Rachel Binns Terrill Carly Giesler, Steve Schoen, Sarah McGhee, and Jacob Jenkins, and the first in 2013, Allison Weidhass. Noted also were all those graduates leaving to take jobs at other universities. No Comm Prom would be complete without the awards portion of the evening. Students recognized by the faculty at this year's event include: Jennifer Pickman Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award: Leah June, and Melissa Milectic; Undergraduate Nader Award: Hannah Prince; MA Nader Award: Megan Wood; James E. Popovich Award:

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Communicating Community

Kristen Blinne organized the 2nd Annual Pedagogy Potluck, which featured a wide array of innovative teaching activities presented by graduate students. In the picture to the right, Nick Riggs explains an improv game called the "Gibberish Translator" as Nathan Hodges, Alisha Menzies and Joey Bartell perform this activity for the audience.

David Purnell and Steve Johns, with participation by the Department of Communication, hosted their 8th “Christmas in July” event on July 27, 2013, to provide backpacks for foster children for the new school year The event was attended by friends, neighbors, USF students, faculty and staff, bringing together different communities for a worthy cause. The backpacks (~80) and donations and contributions ($1400) that were collected this year will be distributed by Friends of Joshua House. Over the past eight years, as the event has grown, David and friends have contributed nearly 1000 backpacks and over $7000.00. Way to go, David and Steve!

Tasha Rennels was selected to serve as the faculty advisor for a Bull Service Break trip to Washington, D.C.—an alternative Spring Break dedicated to service learning. During this trip she, along with ten undergraduate students from USF, learned about issues of poverty and homelessness in the United States and engaged in several service projects to help combat these problems. To the right is a picture of Tasha and her students serving at Capital Area Food Bank, the primary hub for food sourcing, food distribution and nutrition education in the Washington Metro area.

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.Orientation

Week

The Communication Department's Week of Welcome for incoming graduate students was an exciting week packed with social activities and opportunities for students and faculty to reunite or meet for the first time. The Graduate Communication Association (GCA) held its annual lunch on Monday of Orientation Week, providing a variety of sandwiches and snacks for incoming graduate students to enjoy while socializing with members of the department. The incoming students also were able to spend time throughout the week with their peer mentors, who serve as liaisons for acclimating new students each year.

began the process of getting to know each other outside the classroom.

On Wednesday night the GCA social took place at Mermaid Tavern, which offered a more intimate setting, and introduced many new and returning students to a popular Seminole Heights hangout. Showcasing a wide array of on-tap and bottled beers, a good wine list, and a delicious food menu, this cozy, neighborhood gathering place extended a special discount to members of our group.

The GCA kicked off this year’s social events calendar on Tuesday evening of Orientation Week by visiting a local favorite restaurant, Skipper’s Smokehouse.

This mostly outdoor, live music venue did not disappoint. Over 30 attendees made this gathering one to remember. Students and faculty mingled, dined, and drank, and

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Our final social event held during Orientation Week took place at another "local favorite" hangout: Dave and Steve’s house. A former grad student and now a visiting faculty member, Dr. Dave Purnell, and his partner, Steve Johns, offered their home to the department for the evening. Potluck dinners are always a blast and this was no exception! The food was delicious and ranged from lasagna and meatballs to fried chicken wings to homemade coleslaw to avocado brownies and pudding. This event provided an opportunity for incoming and past graduate students to mingle with faculty and staff.

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Orientation week was successful in terms of acclimating newcomers to the program and integrating the new students with those who have been around for a while. We were able to learn about each other academically and personally. Years from now, we will no doubt look back at Orientation Week - like others who have come before us - as pivotal to making lasting friendships, connecting to mentors of life and scholarship, and launching a fantastic 2013-2014 academic year.

4th Annual Communication Picnic The Graduate Communication Association hosted its annual Fall Picnic again this year at Riverfront Park. Along with a variety of delicious side dishes and desserts, hot dogs and burgers were served hot off of the grill! Faculty, staff, and graduate students attended the event and participated in our yearly ChipDip Competition, with Dave Purnell & Steve Johns taking the win. In addition, the GCA held an egg-toss competition, which proved to be highly competitive, exciting, and very messy! A big thanks to this year's phenomenal grill team, Josh Youakim and Zac Burchfield, and thanks to everyone who helped set up and break down everything for the picnic. This event is always a fantastic reminder of our impressive departmental community!

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Communicating Scholarship It was a great year in terms of graduating new communication scholars! Patrick Dillon, Eric Engel, Tammy Jeffries, Huikyong Pang, Christopher Patti, David Purnell, and Allison Weidhaas successfully defended their doctoral dissertations: Patrick Dillon: African Americans and Hospice: A Culture-Centered Exploration of Disparities in End-of-Life Care. Eric Engel: Polysemy, Plurality, & Paradigms: The Quixotic Quest for Commensurability of Ethics and Professionalism in the Practices of Law. Tammy Jeffries: Examining the Ontoepistemological Underpinnings of Diversity Education found in Interpersonal Communication Textbooks. Huikyong Pang: The 2008 Candlelight Protest in South Korea: Articulating the paradox of Resistance in Neoliberal Globalization. Christopher J. Patti: Compassionate Storytelling with Holocaust Survivors: Cultivating Dialogue at the End of an Era. David Purnell: Community on the Menu: Seven Courses to Cultivate Familial Bonds, Exchange Social Capital, and Nourish Community. Allison Weidhaas. An Analysis of How Female Business Owners Construct and Communicate Identity. Magdaline Southard defended her MA thesis, entitled "Fracking TECO: Analyzing the Communication Strategies in TECO Peoples Gas Advertisements.” Megan Wood defended (With Distinction) her MA thesis, entitled “Celebrity Women Tweet: Examining Authenticity, Empowerment, and Responsibility in the Surveillance of Celebrity Twitter.” Toni Powell-Young also received her MA.

Congratulations to each of them!

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Our students are also reaping recognition for their publications and other efforts! This fall, doctoral candidate Kristen Blinne served as the Program Planner and Vice Chair of NCA's Spiritual Communication Division, and she will be participating in the NCA Legislative Assembly at this year's convention. In August, she completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training program at Om Time in Boulder, Colorado. She was awarded NCA Ethnography Division’s “Best Article of 2013” for her article “Auto(erotic)ethnography,” published in Sexualities. Kristen also published “Acupuncture, Illness Identity” (with Mariaelena Bartesaghi), and “Male Circumcision” (with Joey Bartell) in SAGE Encyclopedia of Health Communication. Her work, “Start with the Syllabus: HELPing Learners Learn through Class Content Collaboration” was published in College Teaching. Heather Curry’s "An Architecture of Erasure: Exploring Absences, Ruptures, Negotiations and Self-making in Families Organizing Around Mental Illness," was accepted as a top paper in the Ethnography Division, to be presented in a special session at NCA, 2013. She also received top paper in the Philosophy of Communication Division for "Precarity, Community and Panhandling in Tampa Bay: Seeking a Theoretical Framework at the Local Scale.” Lindy Davidson received a one-year research assistantship for 2013-2014 from The Center for Hospice, Palliative Care, and End-of-Life Studies at USF. Her research project is titled “Spiritual Frameworks in Pediatric Palliative Care: Understanding Parental Decision-making.” Amanda Firestone contributed her essay, “Casting Lumos on Critical Cultural Studies: Teaching Gender, Hegemony, and Other Cultural Stereotypes," for the book, Teaching with Harry Potter: Essays on Classroom Wizardry from Elementary School to College. Nathan Hodges’s article, “The Chemical Life,” was accepted for publication in Health Communication. Sheila Gobes-Ryan has received the Michael Brill Grant in Urban Communication and Environmental Design, sponsored by the Urban Communication Foundation (UCF) and the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA). This program supports new and innovative research projects that bridge the fields of communication and environmental design. Before coming to USF, Nancie Jeanne Hudson received a $400 research grant from the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder for her Master’s Thesis research project, a discourse analysis of 20 job interviews audio-recorded in an employment agency. She also earned a Certificate in College Teaching from the Graduate Teacher Program at UC Boulder. David Jenkins presented a performance of his personal narrative "On His Terms, In My Words" at the NCA Conference in New Orleans. He also directed a production of David Mamet's RACE at the Straz Center with a special emphasis on community engagement and dialogue. As part of this production he organized and moderated a lively post-show panel on contemporary race relations in America featuring Roy Kaplan, Abraham Khan, and Alisha Menzies. His manuscript "Finding My People" was published in Text and Performance Quarterly. He was recently honored with a Critics' Pick for Best Artistic Director in Best of the Bay and Theatre Tampa Bay nominated him as Best Actor for his performance in The Lonesome West.

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Doug Jordan has been promoted to Master Instructor at Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), US Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. He is the Chief of International Education in support of United States Southern Command and United States Northern Command for the University and is responsible for planning, resourcing, and execution of all international education programs for JSOU conducted in the Western Hemisphere. He has also received permanent status on the faculty of JSOU in his position as a US Air Force Civilian. Aphrodite Kocięda was invited as a paid guest speaker at the first ever Sistah Vegan Critical Food and Health Studies Conference. Her presentation was titled, “PETA and the Trope of ‘Activism’: Naturalizing Postfeminism and Postrace Attitudes through Sexualized Bodied Protests.” Also, Aphrodite presented “Using a Culture-Centered Approach towards Mainstream Veganism: Dismantling Neoliberal ‘Covert Whiteness’” at the Florida Communication Association Convention. Alisha Menzies's paper "The Kaleidoscope of Desire: Femininity, Sexuality, and Hip-Hop in Precious” has been accepted for the Anna Julia Cooper Project's 2013 “Gender, Sexuality and Hip-Hop” Conference being held at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. Melissa V. HarrisPerry, the host of MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris Perry,” is hosting the conference. This past summer, Blake Paxton presented “Living With the Events of 9/11: Exploring Continuing Bonds At the Ground Zero Memorial,” and was a panelist with several of his USF peers on mixed method approaches to teaching, both at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. He also returned to his hometown in Illinois where he visited with family, consulted a psychic medium, and conducted preliminary research for his dissertation on continuing bonds with the deceased. In August, he passed his qualifying examinations and became a Ph. D. candidate. During this semester, he has enjoyed getting to know the new graduate students and teaching Grief, Illness, and Loss. Paxton and Tasha Rennels’s article “Sudden Death, Sudden Friend: Exploring the Role of Friendship in Continuing Bonds with the Deceased” was published in Qualitative Communication Research. This November, Paxton will attend the annual NCA conference in Washington D.C. and will participate in the following activities: chairing a panel in the Ethnography Division on sexual behavior, intimacy, and desire; chairing and presenting a paper on a panel on ethnographically exploring connections to the deceased; and presenting papers on an online dating panel and on the top papers panel in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Division. Travis Thompson was appointed to USF’s Undergraduate Studies office as the Senior Director of Tracking and Advising. In this new role, Travis will provide leadership to cultivate and continue the growth of our academic tracking and advising programs throughout USF. Also, Travis and Fred Steier had a paper accepted for presentation (and future publication via the conference proceedings) entitled “Museums as third places: Designing for complex webs of interaction” at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Paris, France. . GCA co-president Jennifer Whalen is now the Florida Communication Association Marketing Coordinator. Her responsibilities include working with the Executive board to identify marketing needs and opportunities, assist with the development and distribution of marketing materials and communications to promote the association and its activities, and procure sponsors and advertisers for the annual convention, newsletter, and/or journal.

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Faculty notebook Publications, collaborations & conferences: It’s all good! Ambar Basu has been collaborating on writing projects and mentoring Ph. D. candidates. He wrote a chapter with Mohan Dutta in the Handbook of Autoethnography and also worked with newly-minted Ph. D. Patrick Dillon on an article that was published in Health Communication. Patrick was one of Ambar’s students and is now a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Memphis. Ambar was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor.

Keith Berry contributed the chapter, “Spinning Autoethnographic Reflexivity, Cultural Critique, and Negotiating Selves,” to the Handbook of Autoethnography. His virtual ethnography (with Tony E. Adams, Ph. D., ‘08), “Size Matters: Performing (Il)Logical Male Bodies on FatClub.com,” was published in Text and Performance Quarterly. Last but certainly not least he also moved to Tampa, bought breathable shirts, and joined a terrific academic department! Left Coast Press will be publishing Art Bochner’s book, Coming to narrative: A personal history of paradigm change in the human sciences, early in 2014. He teamed up with Nick Riggs to co-author a chapter on “Practicing Narrative,” for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research. Art is also offering a course on “Identity, Trauma, and Storytelling” for USF’s Honors College.

Ken Cissna has won the prestigious USF Distinguished Service Award. This award is one of the university's highest honors given in recognition of many years of outstanding service to USF. The award is conferred by USF on faculty who have distinguished themselves through services they have provided without personal gain on behalf of the University, and that have contributed significantly to the welfare of their profession, USF, or the community. Carolyn Ellis traveled to Poland this past summer with Holocaust survivor, Jerry Rawicki. There she directed a 45 minute film, “Behind the Wall,” featuring Jerry, his memory of experiences in the Holocaust, and his feelings about being in Poland for the first time since the Holocaust more than 60 years before. She published the Handbook of Autoethnography (Left Coast Press) with Stacy Holman Jones and Tony Adams. Among the articles she published are: “Collaborative Witnessing of Survival during the Holocaust: An Exemplar of Relational Autoethnography” with Jerry Rawicki and “Crossing the Rabbit Hole: Autoethnographic Life Review,” both in Qualitative Inquiry. Though this work, along with chairing the department, didn’t leave much time for play, she managed during the summer to get in some sunset watching, gardening, and hiking with Art, Buddha, and Zen in North Carolina.

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Jane Jorgenson and Fred Steier published their article, “Frames, Framing, and Designed Conversational Processes: Lessons from the World Café,” in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. Jane traveled to SSCA in Louisville, Kentucky in April where she was featured in a Spotlight panel as Gender Scholar of the Year. In August, Jane and Fred got their cool weather fix with a trip to Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Abe Khan was a featured speaker at the University of Missouri's annual Black Studies Conference, "Dream With Our Eyes Wide Open: Exploring the Black Experience in Sports and Paving New Directions.” Abe’s talk "Sport's Speaking Problem" explains the way in which black athletes are caught in a rhetorical bind between those who demand that they use their celebrity platforms for the cause of social justice and those who admonish them for putting their wealth at risk. Mahuya Pal had her co-authored essays “Breaking the Myth of Indian Call Centers: A Postcolonial Analysis of Resistance” and “’Land is Our Mother’: Alternative Meanings of Development in Subaltern Organizing” published in Communication Monographs and Journal of International and Intercultural Communication respectively. Her co-authored paper with Carolyn Day received the top paper award at the Environmental Communication division of NCA last year. Along with writing, Mahuya spent her summer watching movies and reading books to her daughter.

Loyd Pettegrew taught Organizational Communication online in summer A and converted six classes from Blackboard to Canvas. He also completed research on how new college students make decisions about choosing their major. His findings indicate nearly 70% of a sample of 430 students is on federal college loans and the vast majority of them have done no research on which majors might help them have an economically secure future. Loyd reports, “Given the $1.4T in student loan debt and the absence of jobs, along with the data from this research, the paper suggests we should rethink the "College is an Entitlement" path we have been following and at a minimum do a better job of counseling students to choose majors with which they can be gainfully employed once they graduate.” Loyd also published with the von Mises Institute (free market think tank at Auburn) - "The High Cost of Free" and "Falling for Free." A return to his roots in Solona Beach, CA to surf and take walks along the beach on 70-degree afternoons with his wife was the payoff for his summer labor. David Purnell accepted a one-year visiting assistant professor position at USF after defending his dissertation which focused on building community through food. He has a publication in press at Texas Speech Communication Journal Online entitled, "There's No Home Like Place" focusing on the intersection of interaction with place attachment.

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Lori Roscoe was invited to be the keynote speaker at th the 6 Annual Ethics Symposium for the Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pennsylvania in April. Her presentation was entitled, “Beyond Good Intentions and Patient Perceptions: Competing Definitions of Effective Communication at the End-of-Life,” a version of which was also published in Health Communication. Lori’s co-authors included one of our former doctoral students, Jillian Tullis. She also published with two of our recent graduates - Patrick Dillon and Jacob Jenkins and - in a special issue of the Howard Journal of Communication on health disparities, “African Americans and Decisions about Hospice Care: Implications for Health Message Design.” She also published “Healing the Physician’s Story: A Case Study in Narrative Medicine and End-Of-Life Care,” in a new journal, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics. Getting away a bit from end-of-life, Eric Eisenberg and Lori wrote the entry on emergency room issues for Teresa Thompson’s Encyclopedia of Health Communication. Getting farther away, Lori and Eric spent part of the summer at their cottage on Long Lake in Hale, Michigan where she learned to drive a ski boat as part of their son Joel’s water skiing lessons. Joel is a biology major at USF and his brother Evan recently graduated from USF with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology. Fred Steier is currently on sabbatical and is in residence with the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, in Norway. He’s exploring systemic bases for interconnected crises of globalization. On arrival, Fred gave a public lecture, “Ecology, Flexibility and Learning in Local and Global Civilization,” hosted by the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. http://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/projects/overheating/seminars/fred-steier.html Connected to this, he was also interviewed by a journalist about the lecture and connections to the Overheating project. He’s also doing field research on community and public spaces (including coffee houses), an extension of work he did with his action research seminar on creating more of a sense of place on a university campus (USF). Fred’s recent publications include, “Gregory Bateson Gets a Mobile Phone,” in the initial issue of the new journal, Mobile Media and Communication and he collaborated with Jane Jorgenson on their article, “Frames, Framing, and Designed Conversational Processes: Lessons from the World Café,” in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.

Jay Zalinger spent much of the summer calling strangers around the Tampa Bay area and asking them to come to his new course called “Career Development for Life” and talk to his students about their life stories and professions. Amazingly, every single one of them said yes! The curriculum includes building and critiquing a résumé and cover letter, having a meeting with Jay to discuss current plans, four informational interviews and a final presentation discussing what they learned from these interviews. This class is meant to help students network with self-assurance, prepare to enter the “real world” and help them build and manage their careers—not jobs—with poise, power and positivity. Jay also recently co-authored a book chapter, “Reading Ben Shneiderman’s Email: Identifying Narrative Elements in Email Archives,” in Personal Digital Archiving: Preserving our Digital Heritage. He also gave a talk on his work with the Shneiderman archive at the Personal Digital Archiving conference at the University of Maryland in College Park.

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Chaim Noy has two publications appearing this year and he took a few moments to discuss each of them. He published a book chapter, “Peace activism in tourism: Two cases studies (and a few reflections) in Jerusalem.” This is a book chapter on the uncanny ideological roles that tourism can play in highly-political contexts. He takes a critical position on tourism, which is atypical because usually people tend to see tourism as frivolous and recreational. Yet the tourism industry is highly powerful at both creating experiences and memories, and changing actual landscapes and townscapes. For this specific book chapter, Chaim examined ethnographically a contested tourist site, which is a Jewish/Israel heritage site located in East Jerusalem. He followed the hegemonic and the contesting narratives that are told there. He asked questions such as: who tells these narratives and who silences them? Who gets to hear them and how are audiences or visitors diverted so that they do not hear he truth? Chaim also published an article, “An Aikidōka’s Contribution to the Teaching of Qualitative Inquiry,” in Qualitative Research. Chaim’s main hobby has been training in aikido, which is a Japanese peaceful martial art. He’s been doing that for nearly 25 years, and during the last years he occasionally found himself thinking about what he does in terms of academic knowledge and theories and research. So he wrote this paper, where he was able to take time to reflect on his training. Primarily, Chaim wanted to see if there were things that we did when we train in aikido, which can be educational and even inspiring when we teach, specifically when we teach qualitative research methods. Since his approach to research is embodied, Chaim thinks that there are insightful and original lessons to be learned from this truly inter-disciplinary nexus – where academic disciplines meet somatic disciplines. Chaim says, “So it’s all very enjoyable.”

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Alumni News and Notes Michael Arrington has moved to Terre Haute to accept an associate professor position in Indiana State University's Department of Communication. He has also been named Director of Graduate Studies. Please feel free to contact him at his new email address: [email protected] Robin Boylorn’s (Ph. D., 2009) first book, Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience (Peter Lang, 2013) has received two book awards this year including the inaugural H. L. “Bud” Goodall, Jr., and Nicholas Trujillo “It’s A Way of Life” Award, which she received in May at ICQI, and the 2013 National Communication Association Ethnography Division Best Book Award. Her second book, Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life, co-edited with Mark P. Orbe, is in press with Left Coast Press. Her recent publications include journal articles in Liminalities and International Review of Qualitative Research, and book chapters in Engaging Culture, Race and Spirituality in Education: New Visions and The Handbook of Autoethnography. In addition to teaching, writing and teaching about writing she is devoting time to intentional selfcare, which these days means anything from ratchet TV marathons to monthly massages. Catherine (Bacos) Clinch – BA, Theatre; MA, Speech Communications – is a media expert who covers 30-50 conferences each year in all of the media/marketing silos. Through her column MEDIA GRAZING, Catherine has done cross silo analysis and developed a system for creating predictive models in media and entertainment. The most recent demonstration of this skill is the fact that Catherine has just been awarded her first US Patent for a Story Delivery System and Method of Mobile Entertainment. She has written scripts for television and also served a two-year term on the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America west. Catherine is a strong advocate for special needs students (including her oldest son) as Commissioner of Special Education in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is also a blogger for The Huffington Post. Catherine can be reached at: [email protected] Cris Davis and Deb Breede have had fun visiting each other between Charlotte, NC and Myrtle Beach, SC for the last several years. Now they’re collaborating on some scholarly projects as well. After receiving a research access grant to study free and slave burial rituals on an original land grant called Hobcaw Barony, including grave marker epitaphs and cultural artifacts, they are now expanding their studies to include narratives and legends as told by free and slave participants in South Carolina’s former slave trade. Cris continues as director of the MA program at UNC-Charlotte as she balances that with her writing. Her book Communicating Hope: An Ethnography of a Children’s Mental Health Care Team (Left Coast Press) came out in April, and her book about qualitative communication scholars (including Carolyn Ellis, Buddy Goodall, Chris Poulos, and Stacy Holman Jones, among others), Conversations about Qualitative Communication Research: Behind the Scenes with Leading Scholars will be released by Left Coast Press by the end of this year. She is currently collecting data for her next book, on end-of-life communication, by hanging around cemeteries, going on ghost hunts, watching horror films, sharing ghost stories, reading epitaphs, and observing a pediatric palliative care team at a children’s hospital.

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Deb continues to pursue her interests in communication activism as she advocates on behalf of survivors of gender violence within her new course, Communication Activism. Her students raised over $200.00 for survivors of human trafficking and were happy to honor those brave survivors by presenting them with the funds in a lovely ceremony. Laura Ellingson (Ph. D., 2001) published her second book in her aunting project with Patty Sotirin (Michigan Tech Univ.) in February, entitled Where the Aunts Are: Family, Feminism, and Kinship in Popular Culture (Baylor University Press 2013). Laura continues her work as the Director of the Women's & Gender Studies Program at Santa Clara University, while also teaching courses in Communication. This year she celebrated her 20th wedding anniversary with her amazing partner, Glenn, at Point Lobos, near Carmel, CA. After accepting a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI), J. Jacob Jenkins recently completed a cross-country move to southern California. In the coming months, Jenkins will have the unique opportunity to work alongside his new colleagues to (re)design CSUCI’s relatively young Communication program, which offers emphases in Health Communication, Environmental Communication, and Nonprofit/Business Communication. In addition, Jenkins has several forthcoming publications, including three journal articles, three book chapters, eight reference works, a supplemental textbook, and a book based on his dissertation research entitled The Diversity Paradox: Seeking Community in an Intercultural Church. Slavica Kodish teaches Organizational Communication and related courses in the Department of Communication Studies at Southeast Missouri State University, a mid-size university located in Cape Girardeau. She is working on a research project on organizational trust, and is guiding a number of students’ research projects. Slavica credits her USF experience in her success: “In my work with students – whether it’s research or teaching, I am inspired by my professors and mentors from the Department of Communication at USF. “ Linda Laine is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Central College in Pella, Iowa. Central is a small private liberal arts college with approximately 1,500 students, where she is in her 10th year. Linda is also currently serving as chair of the Communication Studies Department, which has four full-time faculty. She teaches courses in organizational, intercultural, and health communication. She also has become involved in community-based learning. Gin Kohl Lieberman has created a career officiating secular weddings and commitment ceremonies at Walt Disney World and helping families and friends celebrate the lives of loved ones for Hodges Family Funeral Home in Pasco County. On a more academic note, she is presently assisting the Evolution Institute with arrangements for its upcoming Quality of Life workshop in Oslo this fall.

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In June of 2009, Margaret Ostrenko responded to a classified ad in the Tampa Times for social scientists to embed as intelligence analysts with U.S. military units fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. The program was created to add a sociocultural capability, a human element to the battlefield equation. Margaret published a wellreceived daily wrap-up of cultural affairs and was awarded the Superior Civil Service Award for her work. But she says the greatest rewards from her experience came from daily interactions. “Most importantly, I ventured into a long-term engagement with women working in the ‘international’ airport, many of whom had been together for decades of war, sanctioned for 15 years, and now joyful at the prospects at what ‘liberation’ would bring,” she said. After Anita Raghavan received her BA (1980) and MA (1984) from USF, she went on to get a Ph. D. in communication studies at the University of Florida. She has continued to pursue her interests in educational, health, social, and cultural issues. She has provided professional assistance to AIDS education; child abuse education and prevention; hunger education, research, and prevention; organ and tissue education and donation; disability information and advocacy; and aging issues. These days she has additional fun helping interpret at a living history museum, and being on the board of a university anthropology museum while raising a few kids. Her current passion is bettering the world for people with disabilities, which she pursues with Families Together, Inc. in Wichita, Kansas. She may be reached at [email protected] . Rachel Silverman (Ph. D., 2011) continues her work as an advocate for the LGBT Jewish community through presentations and publications. Recently, she published the piece “Comedy as Correction: Perspective by Incongruity on Will & Grace and Queer as Folk” in the journal Sexuality & Culture: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly and spoke at an event entitled, “My House Shall be a House for All People: The Blessings and Challenges of Being an Inclusive Jewish Community” hosted by Metro Community and Wellness Center and the Tampa JCC. Rachel is also in the process of editing two books; the first book, a narrative collection about pregnancy loss, is co-edited with fellow USF alum Jay Baglia. The second book, a critical examination of the popular series, The Real Housewives, includes many USFers as contributors, some of whom are: Robin Boylorn, Emily Ryalls, Steve Schoen, Tony Adams and Keith Berry. Tim Simpson has worked at University of Macau for 12 years. Macau is a tiny city spread across three small islands near Hong Kong and just off the coast of Southern China. Tim’s research has been focused on the postcolonial transformation of Macau from a sleepy trading outpost and the pedagogical role that the city and its gaming resorts play in China's own economic expansion and massive domestic urbanization project. At UM, he served as head of the Department of Communication for four years, and then moved to his current administrative role as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. He encourages anyone looking for academic adventure to take a look at UM’s job vacancies on its website.

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After defending her thesis in June, Magdaline Southard pursued a position with the Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition (FWCE), a nonprofit organization of conservationists, photographers and researchers, who aim to protect and restore connected habitat and migration corridors essential for the survival of Florida’s diverse wildlife, including wideranging panthers, black bears and other native species. The corridor addresses the fragmentation of natural landscapes and watersheds from the Everglades ecosystem north to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia. The FWCE is positioned to mend the perception gap through an education and awareness campaign that demonstrates the connection between the landscapes and watersheds. The centerpiece of this strategy is the 1,000 mile Expedition, which launched January 17, 2012 that captured the Florida corridor through a documentary film and the conservation photography of Carlton Ward. As the Educational Curriculum Coordinator for the FWCE, her goal is to offer educators a series of lesson plans, beginning with middle school age students, introducing the ecological issues in our state in hopes of generating respect and appreciation for wildlife. She is focused on creating an educator’s guide to accompany the documentary film which captured the Expedition. If you’re interested in more information about this organization, please check out the website: http://www.floridawildlifecorridor.org Also, Maddie has returned to Sweetwater Organic Community Farm to volunteer as a Field Trip Guide and is helping to provide hands-on, interactive field trips about local and organic agriculture, sustainability, and nutrition for visitors of all ages from public and private schools, youth groups, and other area organizations. She writes, “Being involved at Sweetwater is such a refreshing and rewarding experience because I’m actively participating in a community supported agriculture program which enriches people’s lives, health and the surrounding environment.” Please check them out at the Sunday Market! http://sweetwater-organic.org/sunday-market/ Lisa Tillmann (Ph.D., 1998) was on a full-year research sabbatical in 2012-13. She completed production of two documentary films, Off the Menu: Challenging the Politics and Economics of Body and Food (http://www.cinemaservesjustice.com/off-the-menu.html) and Remembering a Cool September, a film about LGBT equality and civil rights http://www.cinemaservesjustice.com/Remembering.html). She has begun work on a third film, Weight Problem, about cultural narratives of “obesity” and anti-fat prejudice. On sabbatical, Lisa also traveled to India with her partner John Sansoucie; her parents, John and Beth Tillmann; and friends Kathryn Norsworthy and Deena Flamm. John Sansoucie and Lisa also visited Thailand and Australia before returning home to their aging basset hound, Linus. Leslie Tod moved from her post as Academic Advisor in the Department of Communication and into a newly designed position as Academic Success Advocate in Undergraduate Studies at USF. “Leaving my academic home of many years was not an easy decision, but the new position is great and continues to challenge and fascinate. All the experience and insights I gained being a part of the Department of Communication and working with our students has served me well!” Besides facilitating student success at USF, Leslie is maintaining close, if long distance, relationships with her sons. Her eldest son Louis completed his first year in the Media Studies program at Liverpool Hope University and her younger son John got an opportunity to train at the grounds of Everton Football (read soccer) Club in front of their scouts.

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During the 2012-2013 academic year, Jillian Tullis (Class of 2009), published in Health Communication, Journal of Medicine and the Person, and contributed chapters to the Handbook of Autoethnography and Religion and Communication: An Anthology of Extensions in Theory, Research, and Method. She was awarded a $6,000 faculty research grant from her institution, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and received a competitive research leave, which she is taking this fall. In May 2013, she conducted a site visit to Lima and Cusco, Peru and plans to take students to Peru during Summer 2014 to study Health and Intercultural Communication. Allison Weidhaas received her Ph. D. from USF in 2013 and now teaches as an Assistant Professor at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ. She was hired to teach in the department's new master's program in Business Communication. She is settling in to a new home in New Jersey with her husband and daughter and looks forward to catching up with everyone and learning about their new adventures.

News from the Undergraduate Director By Mike LeVan I took on the administrative responsibilities for the Undergraduate Program in January 2013 from the able hands of Lori Roscoe, who herself took on the new role of Associate Department Chair. The program has welcomed a lot of new faces over the past two years, with the addition of several new faculty: associate professors Art Ramirez (interpersonal and computer-mediated communication), Chaim Noy (tourism studies, technology, and family communication), and Keith Berry (relational communication and identity); assistant professors Aisha Durham (cultural criticism and Black popular culture studies), Jay Zalinger (technology, social media, and narrative), and Chris McRae (performance studies and cultural studies); and visiting and adjunct faculty Aubrey Huber (critical communication pedagogy) and David Purnell (gender, sexuality, and narrative). The program seems to constantly evolve, and our students continue to thrive in the program. Also at the beginning of the year we welcomed Andrea Sereno as our new undergraduate advisor Andrea replaces longtime advisor Leslie Tod, who took a position in the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies. Andrea brings an upbeat style, indefatigable enthusiasm, and a bubbly persona to advising our majors while encouraging them to think in terms of life-long career goals. All in all, the theme of the year has been to embrace the new additions to our academic community, and to continue to work to build a stronger and stronger undergraduate program.

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News from the Graduate Director By Jane Jorgenson Associate Professor The graduate program has had another outstanding year. What else would you expect me to say in our annual newsletter? But the fact is, graduate enrollments are strong, student quality is excellent, and Ph. D. graduation rates are healthy. In the past year, nine students defended their dissertations, a near record! They include Steve Schoen, Sarah McGhee, Allison Weidhaas, Jacob Jenkins, Chris Patti, Patrick Dillon, Tammy Jeffries, Huikyong Pang, and David Purnell. I’m also pleased to report that two students at the Master’s level, Toni Powell Young and Maddie Southard, completed their degrees. Congratulations to everyone! Student demand for our program stayed strong, with nearly seventy-five applications for our Master’s and Doctoral programs this year. The new cohort of students joins us from diverse academic institutions ranging from small liberal arts colleges to research universities, and they bring a wide range of interests. We are delighted to welcome four new Master’s students: Ashley Martinez, Grace Peters, Layla Rivera, and Josh Youakim. At the Ph. D. level we are joined by: Jacob Abraham, Shomik Chakrabarti, Meredith Clements, Charles Jones, Alyse Keller, Erin Gough, Lorraine Monteagut, Toni Powell Young, and Erin Scheffels.

their work at conferences. This year students presented papers at venues ranging from the 5th annual Graduate Student Research Symposium here at USF to regional and national meetings such as NCA, the Academy of Management, the Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the Environmental Design Research Association to name just a few. I sometimes have the pleasure of attending these panels and presentations and I’m reminded that our students’ conference participation is one of our best recruiting tools. The Graduate Communication Association (GCA) has again been active this year, lending valuable assistance to me as graduate director. During orientation, members of the GCA partnered with incoming students as peer mentors and organized outings to local landmarks like Skipper’s Smokehouse. They staffed our booth at the NCA Graduate School Open House, and provided hospitality to visiting applicants. These efforts are a big part of what make our program such a supportive place. I also want to give special thanks to Heidi Paintner who joined us this year as academic program specialist. Heidi has been a tremendous addition, taking the lead in developing new systems for tracking student progress and finding ways to improve our operations. As I begin my third year, I’m still learning new things about SACS assessment, scheduling, and admissions. What makes the job so enjoyable is the warmth and enthusiasm shared by our graduate students, faculty and staff. http://communication.usf.edu/graduate/

As you will read in this newsletter, our graduate students continued to bring visibility to the department as they shared

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New faces Meet Heidi Paintner By Blake Paxton Heidi Paintner — she’s the friendly face we have all come to know and love as our department’s academic program specialist. Originally a Florida native, Heidi split her time growing up with family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Tampa Bay. While pursuing her associate of arts degree at Pasco-Hernando Community College, she spent time as a student worker in the school’s financial aid office. It was here that Heidi believes she first started to become interested in working in higher education. During her time at PHCC, she also served as the student government association president and vice president. Heidi was also elected to serve as the Florida Junior Community College Student Government Association Legislative Liaison—working with other student representatives to lobby the Florida Legislature. After completing her associate’s degree, Heidi obtained a bachelor’s in finance at the University of South Florida. Shortly thereafter, she went on to receive a master’s in global sustainability. She completed a master’s thesis working with ENZO, a corporation in Arizona that developed an additive for plastic water bottles, making them biodegradable. While working on her

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master’s degree, Heidi also worked in the Department of Religious Studies as the academic program specialist. Heidi has enjoyed her time thus far in the Department of Communication. “I really enjoy the people in this department and I learn something new every day,” she says. “I also enjoy supporting the students and watching them achieve their goals. It’s very rewarding!” In the future, Heidi hopes to pursue either a CPA or Ph. D.—facilitating a position in the corporate sector or as a university professor. Heidi currently lives in a condo in Tampa Palms with her two cats Meeshka and Smokey. She enjoys yard sales, thrift stores, arts, crafts, interior decorating, and cooking. She also enjoys reading classic English and American literature and watching Showtime and HBO. Heidi is most proud of the friendships and other relationships she has in her life. “I believe success is not defined by what one has done academically or financially, but rather by the quality of one’s interpersonal relationships. I am very proud of the wonderful people I have in my life, I am truly blessed,” she says. So the next time you walk by her office and grab a chocolate, get a paper signed, or just receive a cheerful greeting from Ms. Paintner, remember all this wonderful individual has accomplished and how much we appreciate her hard work in our department.

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Serap Erincin, New Post Doc Instructor By Chris McRae What did you do before coming to Tampa? Just before coming to Tampa I was in London as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas. I was invited last year and completed my first visit this past August. I will be going back and forth for the next couple of years. Right before that I was visiting Istanbul, which is where I’m from, where I got my BA and my first MA at the Bogazici University, and where I lived and worked until I moved to London when I was 25. I flew to Istanbul from the Performance Studies International Conference at Stanford University, and last Spring I was teaching at NYU’s Department of Performance Studies where I recently got my Ph.D. What are your research interests/current projects? I am currently writing a performance piece called Suppression of Absence. I am working on a book about performance, technology, senses and affect, and The Wooster Group, and another project on performance, technology, and archives. I also work on human rights, especially focusing on transnational and transglobal performances of resistances.

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What is the most interesting thing (so far) about USF or Tampa? Performance Studies is very encompassing, but it’s also very small, only a few universities have a Performance Studies focus, let alone a program. Communication on the other hand is a very big field. I find it very interesting to experience how related NYU’s Performance Studies (where I very much felt home, academically speaking) and USF’s Communication are; I have felt at home since my first day here and I am impressed by this department’s focus on Performance Studies. I realize I think of everyone here as Performance Studies people, and that makes me very happy -the diversity of the department is remarkable and I like being a part of that. For me this was a very smooth transition. Similarly, other than how much one needs to rely on a car, I have warmed up to Tampa almost immediately. Parts of this city are very beautiful and reminiscent of the Mediterranean, and sometimes little parts remind me of New York. This I find very interesting as I guess I was expecting to feel completely different and was a bit worried as I only ever lived in three very big cities. I also feel like it’s a city in transition and has the potential to be a very strong base for arts in the area. This isn’t a very sophisticated observation perhaps, but I was in a Depeche Mode concert here a few weeks ago, and the energy of the crowd made me appreciate the population in this area very much.

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David Purnell, New Visiting Professor By Brad Stager If you find yourself in the presence of newlyconferred Ph. D. David Purnell, there’s a good chance you’ll feel “at home.” Wherever that special place may, or may not be. His dissertation, Community on the Menu: Seven Courses to Cultivate Familial Bonds, Exchange Social Capital, and Nourish Community, suggests there’s no doubt he can get to the heart of the relationships people form with their environment. “I look at community as family and challenge our conceptions of what is community and what is family. Events in my life have led me to a study of place losing place, seeking place, and finding place. My research highlights some of my life experiences on a journey consisting of accounts of being homeless, looking for acceptance, and finding a true sense of self among a chosen community of friends that have become family,” he said

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David’s life experiences have shaped his aspirations for developing greater community bonds through service to others. His father served in the military and law enforcement and David himself was in the air force for a while. The Purnell family also made it a point to help other families who might need it. David doesn’t stop at the theoretical end of things. He puts into practice his beliefs about food and community by opening up his comfortable, Seminole Heights home to his neighbors on Wednesday nights to hang out, share food, stories and ideas. It has also become a favorite place to visit for his departmental colleagues and students as well. David also has a publication in press. "There's No Home Like Place" focuses on the intersection of interaction with place attachment in Texas Speech Communication Journal Online.

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Keith Berry, New Associate Professor: A USF Alum Introduces his Friend and Informal Mentor By Tony E. Adams (Ph.D., 2008) I met Keith in 2001 when I started the Masters program in Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC); Keith, a native Chicagoan, was beginning his second year of the doctoral program. Keith quickly became one of my mentors: He supported me when I first embraced my gay identity (2001), helped me learn about the meaning(s) of coming out, took me to my first LGBTQ pride parade (Chicago, 2002), and helped me draft my first NCA submission, which also happened to be about coming out (2002). Further, we would meet most days to write, read, and drink iced tea in the café at Barnes & Noble, and we shared an advisor, Lenore Langsdorf. In 2003, Keith defended his dissertation on identity formation among teens (he worked with a high school speech team, “the speechies”) and the transformative nature of ethnographic research concerning ethnographers’ identities. The following year he stayed on at SIUC as a full-time lecturer. In Fall 2004, Keith became a full-time faculty member of the Communicating Arts Department at the University of WisconsinSuperior (UW-S); at the same time, I started the doctoral program at USF. In June 2004, I left Carbondale for USF, a few weeks before Keith left Carbondale for UW-S. Our departure was terrible—the moving truck in Keith’s driveway, where we said our tearful goodbyes; the “I’ll visit you soon” conversations; the sadness in realizing that we wouldn’t share a city-space

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any time soon and maybe never again. In August 2004, during USF’s orientation week, Keith visited me in Tampa and accompanied me—a new and nervous Ph.D. student—to a teaching training session (facilitated by Navita Cummings James) and to the opening graduate student and faculty meetand-greet. I like to think of this visit as Keith’s first immersion into the department at USF. Since 2001, our relationship has grown in innumerable ways. Keith and I recently completed a six-year-long project on FatClub.com, an online community comprised of mostly gay men who want to gain weight or who want to help others gain weight. We wrote a book chapter about media personality Andy Cohen and his campy Watch What Happens Live program on BRAVO, and we are working on a book about sexuality. We are also still trying to work all four of The Golden Girls’ names (Blanche, Sophia, Dorothy, Rose) into one of our projects. Now Keith is a new associate professor at USF. I am excited to see his new research projects—on bullying, mindfulness, the deeper meanings and implications of selfunderstanding and awareness in interaction—come to fruition. I am also excited to hear more about his work with graduate students; stemming from his work with me, I am confident that he will help cultivate the conditions for students to excel both personally and professionally. And his being at USF is close to our being in the same town since I get to see him every time I visit my friends there.

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Chris McRae, Assistant Professor; Beginning Again, Again By Chris McRae I am thrilled to be starting a new position as an Assistant Professor here in the Department of Communication at USF this fall. This is a wonderful community of scholars and students, and I am looking forward to taking the next step in my career amongst these great people! I feel like I’m in a very unique and happy position of getting to begin again (again) here in the Department of Communication. My first start with this Department was as an undergraduate student. I was initially drawn in by a course taught by Carol Jabolonski called “Rhetoric of the Sixties.” However, I didn’t actually declare my major in the department until I took Carolyn Ellis’ “Writing Lives” class, and Stacy Holman Jones’s course: “Writing as Performance.” The idea that communication, in the form of personal narrative and performance, could be studied and practiced, in ways that could generate new and different questions about the world was intriguing and exciting for me. It was so exciting that I applied to the MA program, so that I could begin again in the department. As a graduate student in the department I started to focus my interests specifically on questions of truth in narrative, and music performance. I also started, as a graduate student at USF, teaching for the first time. When I left USF to work on my Ph. D. at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois I had no idea that I might one day return to Tampa. But in the final semester of my Ph. D. program I was presented with the opportunity to begin again as an instructor in

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the Department of Communication at USF. In my position as instructor with the department for the last two years I had the opportunity to teach a number of classes in Performance Studies at the undergraduate level. One of the highlights of my teaching career came earlier this year in the spring of 2013, when I had the opportunity to take the students in my Communication as Performance Lab class to the Patti Pace Performance Festival hosted by Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. The students in my class had the opportunity to perform and receive feedback from performance students and scholars from across the country. At the end of the semester the students created a performance called, “Following Fairytale Fragments” that they presented at Communication Day. Getting to witness the growth and development of these students over the course of that semester was an amazing experience. Now, I find myself in a new position as an Assistant Professor here at USF, and once again I have the chance to begin again in the Department of Communication. I am looking forward to continuing to develop my research and teaching in ways that can productively contribute to this community. Currently, my primary research focus is on the question of listening as a relational act and performance of learning from others. I’m working from the example of listening to music, and in particular the music of Miles Davis, as a case study for developing ways of thinking about listening as a productive and creative process. I am also preparing to teach a graduate class (Performance Theory) in the spring. This new beginning is already turning out to be a fantastic start.

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In conversation: Elizabeth Bell Teacher, administrator, and mentor By Lisa Spinazola After greeting me and offering coffee, Dr. Elizabeth Bell accompanied me to her office and we sat at a small conference table. Her office was warm and inviting, reflective of her charm and energy. We chatted to the rhythm of rain drumming upon the massive windows, which take up the length of her office. We started with how the newsletter got its name. What was once known as MetaCommunication became Rapport, thanks to a brainstorming session with her son one evening at KFC. The possibility of changing jobs within the university presented itself about a year ago. Folks from the dean’s office and others sought her out and asked if she would consider applying for the position of Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs. There were originally thirteen candidates. The list was eventually narrowed to three and then two. Confronted with a 3-day interview schedule, her first order of business was shopping for some new clothes. I cannot think of a better reason to indulge. She interviewed with at least 8 individuals or groups over a period of three days and heard back within a month that the position was hers! A day in her life begins with the decision on how best to avoid the morning traffic: leave extra early or arrive around 9. Pouring a delicious cup of the 24/7, endless coffee is the next order of business, followed up with answering email, and signing things, lots of things, all day long. The staff, she reports, are “wonderful, supportive, helpful and have the best interests of faculty, staff, and students at heart.” They are inspirational, hardworking and do their jobs well, humbling her and inspiring her to try harder herself. Something that took “getting used to” is that she no longer keeps her own calendar and does not really know what each day holds until the day arrives. I think back and realize that I made my appointment for this interview through Sharon Hamilton-Johnson, a competent, kind member of the staff Dr. Bell had referred to earlier and just one of the many people who has access to and schedules appointments on the calendar. Dr. Bell tells me there is a certain freedom in not being responsible for scheduling, allowing her to focus on the process and content of the meetings she holds. Listening, summarizing, and deciding on the action steps to take is how she incorporates her communication and performance background into her current position.

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For those new to our department, I asked Dr. Bell to map the last few years of her journey. About four years ago, she became Interim Chair for the Department of Communication while Dr. Ken Cissna was on leave. The nine-month trial run gave her a way of testing the administrative ground, a dress rehearsal of sorts where she was able to relieve any fears she may have had. She soon discovered she enjoyed this role. Dr. Eric Eisenberg offered her the position of Interim Chair of Women and Gender Studies (WGS), which she said she’d accept only if it was permanent and not interim. His answer was yes and she held that title for two years. The cooperation, support, and camaraderie she encountered there helped offset the challenges that came with the tasks of growing a department and right-sizing the curriculum in WGS. Her time as Chair in WGS helped prepare her for her current job in the dean’s office and her long-time role as a member of faculty helps her keep perspective and brings balance when she handles tasks like new faculty orientations, tenure promotions, and helping the junior faculty succeed. When asked what she’d like to add in closing, she said, “Eric Eisenberg is magnificent.” He works hard, asks the smartest questions, is able to pinpoint the issues, and makes everyone around him feel important. She added that while she knew all of these things already from being his colleague and working with him when she was chair, seeing him at work, in action, in the Dean’s office is impressive. As a college, she says, we are lucky to have him “driving this bus!” Indeed, we also are lucky to have Elizabeth Bell alongside him. Apparently a degree and experience in the field of Communication is good training for being a successful administrator.

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Your Rapport Editors Brad Stager joined the Communication Department at the beginning of the year as a staff assistant, working with digital media and maintaining our web site. He documented life in the fleet from the Straits of Magellan to the North Arabian Sea as a navy photographer and has a B.A. in Mass Communications from USF, an AS in Marketing from City College San Francisco and an AA in Asian Studies from University of Maryland College Park. You can know Brad better by checking out his work. Here is a link to an audio commentary about generational conflict http://www.wusf.usf.edu/news/2006/07/07/florida_comment aries_-_brad_stager and here's a link to an online story about a performance place http://tbo.com/northeast-tampa/university-area-business-offers-boba-entertainment-relaxed-vibe20131016/.

Lisa Spinazola is a second year Masters student who thoroughly enjoys her first experience teaching Intro to Public Speaking, working as Research Assistant to Carolyn Ellis, serving as Social Events Planner for the GCA, and her role as peer mentor. She comes to Communication via an AS in Counseling and Human Services and a BA in Relational Communication with a minor in Criminology. She is active in the community as she facilitates grief counseling for incarcerated adolescent males. She has also developed a curriculum for and facilitates grief art camps for teens during the summers through Suncoast Kids Place.

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Dissertation snapshots Examining the Ontoepistemological Underpinnings of Diversity Education Found in Interpersonal Communication Textbooks. By Tammy Jeffries Hello, my name is Tammy Jeffries and my educational journey (and research interests) began as a child at Friends School in Detroit, a liberal school founded in the Quaker traditions emphasizing the tradition of equality. As a child I took these lessons to heart and lived a life that minimized judging others. As I worked through the educational system toward my degree I centered most of my research on the ideas of equality, relationships, and identity development. As my knowledge developed I grew more and more interested in understanding how we shape messages that deal with cultural diversity and help to show how these messages are communicated and/or miscommunicated. Later in my academic program I became interested in understanding pedagogy and worked to develop my own pedagogical approach to diversity education. This fascination with pedagogy and diversity led me to my dissertation. I have recently defended my dissertation project titled, Examining the Ontoepistemological Underpinnings of Diversity Education Found in Interpersonal Communication Textbooks. The study centered on the points where diversity, pedagogy and communication intersect by examining how we come to know what we know in the field of communication, and what we do with that information (regarding diversity education). Currently I am searching for a position in a department that supports my desire to teach: applied communication, language and social interaction, qualitative methods, communication theory, interpersonal communication and of course issues in diversity. In this new position I hope to apply my research and teaching experience in the field of communication to construct a new outlook on negotiating issues in diversity and diversity education at the collegiate level. With luck and prayer I will hopefully find a job where I can live close to my family and make a difference in the lives of my students while continuing to do the research I love.

Compassionate Storytelling with Holocaust Survivors: Cultivating Dialogue at the End of an Era By Chris Patti Henry Greenspan has noted that a genuine interview with a Holocaust survivor is a relatively rare thing. This may seem odd, since more 100,000 oral history interviews with survivors of the Shoah are archived worldwide. Despite the quantity of interviews in existence, there is a lack of repeated, casual, dialogic, and relational interviews with individual Holocaust survivors. My feeling was that ethnographically-oriented communication scholars ought

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to bring much to the practice of conducting “genuine interviews” with Holocaust survivors. Toward that end, as an off-shoot of conducting oral history interviews as part of Carolyn Ellis’s team—for a project in collaboration with the USF Library Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center and Florida Holocaust Museum—I connected with three Holocaust survivors in particular. Over three years, I formed ongoing ethnographic relationships with Salomon Wainberg and his wife Sandy, Manuel Goldberg and his partner Rachel Rivlin, and Sonia Wasserberger. My goal was to collaborate with them in ways they found valuable and interesting, seeking to see what we could get into together, rather than what I could get out of them in the form of data. I used compassionate ethnographic storytelling to represent our spontaneous, conversational dialogues, focusing on the words, voices, and stories of my collaborators. In listening with Sal and Sandy Wainberg, I learned about the struggle of a Polish hidden-child survivor of the Shoah, the evolution of a wise man who became a successful CPA and pillar of his community, and about Sal and Sandy’s beautiful marriage (which continued to grow in connection to Sal’s public telling of his experiences as a child). Sal and I emphasized the connections formed through communicating our stories, and he spoke to me about the power of “really listening” at the end of life. Manuel Goldberg and Rachel Rivlin shared with me Manuel’s story, which he had not told publically at the time, of living near the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. His was a story at the symbolic and geographic edges of the Holocaust. I learned about the promise and tensions of ethnographic identification and the need to respect feelings of rage from a peaceful retired psychologist whose father was murdered in Auschwitz. Manuel and Rachel opened up to me their evolving and playful relationship and allowed our own comic-yet-serious relationship to blossom. Sonia Wasserberger talked with me about her family’s harrowing refugee story. Cast out of their home country, they endured a journey that took them from Poland to a Siberian prison camp to a D.P. camp in Uzbekistan, where, in 1948, Sonia found and married her husband Alfred. Mrs. Wasserberger taught me to better appreciate the multiple voices and symbolic registers in a single story. Possibilities for cultivating affinity across borders and bloodlines emerged as the central theme in our conversations. My relationship with these individuals and stories continues and will for years to come. Carolyn Ellis and I have co-authored a journal article scheduled for publication in 2014, in Storytelling, Self, Society, on the core of our work with Holocaust survivors titled, “With Heart: Compassionate Storytelling and Interviewing with Holocaust Survivors.” My dissertation and this article are about challenging ourselves to err on the side of connecting dialogically and humanely in our lives and research. A key example of what this looks like occurred at my dissertation defense. The survivors with whom I collaborated were in attendance and said, “We’re not here as participants, we’re here as family.”

African Americans and Hospice: A Culture-Centered Exploration of Disparities in End-of-Life Care By Patrick Dillon It has been a busy year for my family and me. I defended my dissertation in early summer and graduated in August. My dissertation focused on end-of-life healthcare disparities among African American patients. A number of studies suggest that older African Americans–a population that experiences higher morbidity and mortality than any other racial/ethnic group–generally pay more for lower quality end-oflife care than comparable non-Hispanic white patients. In recent years,

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many have argued that disparities in end-of-life care persist because African Americans are underrepresented among the hospice population. In partnership with a local hospice organization and the Center for Hospice, Palliative Care and End-of-Life Studies, I used an ethnographic approach to gain a better understanding of disparities in hospice enrollment and develop strategies for promoting informed hospice decisions. The results of the study suggest a need to understand hospice disparities as tied to structural inequality (e.g., discrimination, lack of insurance) within the US health system and called for hospice policy reform and communitybased partnerships to promote hospice services.

The day after graduation, Maggie, Liam, and I made the trip north to Memphis, Tennessee. A few weeks later, I began my first semester as an Assistant Professor of Health Communication at the University of Memphis. Although we are still settling in, Memphis is already starting to feel like home. We are enjoying all that the city has to offer, including great food, excellent local music and theatre performances, and the Memphis Tigers football team. In the middle of all of this fun, I am also finding time to design/teach new classes, finish some existing writing projects, and edit my dissertation into articles and book chapters. We continue to miss our USF family but look forward to a bright future in Memphis.

The 2008 Candlelight Protest in South Korea: Articulating the Paradox of Resistance in Neoliberal Globalization. By Huikyong Pang My dissertation focuses on the 2008 candlelight protest in South Korea against imports of U.S. beef. Despite Koreans’ belief that U.S. beef might possess mad cow disease, the Korean government arranged the beef trade deal to expand trade agreements with the United States. Enraged at the government for approving the beef deal behind closed doors in April 2008, the Korean public launched protest activities that quickly spiraled into the country’s largest social movement in 20 years. With its extensive size and duration, the 2008 candlelight protest has merited special attention from journalists, political commentators, and human and social science scholars, all of whom have attempted to understand the socio-political meaning of the protest. My work joins the efforts of identifying the protest and finding its socio-political meaning. However, rather than defining the protest based on its interior characteristic features just as the extant works have done, my work makes a commitment to exploring the exterior factors in recent Korean history that formulate the identity of the protest, based on the notion of articulation (advanced by Lawrence Grossberg). By exploring the multi-dimensional (political, economic, social, and cultural) factors, my work explains how the 2008 candlelight protest developed with its own carnivalesque texture and hues, and discusses how the 2008 candlelight protest was related to the evolution process of capitalism that constructs and deconstructs itself alongside industrialization and global exchanges. My dissertation findings present that the 2008 candlelight protest was neither pure resistance against nor pure subordination to mainstream eco-political principles but rather was caught between containment and possibility in the era of neoliberal globalization.

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An Analysis of How Female Business Owners Construct and Communicate Identity By Allison Weidhaas I have my BA and MA from Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. Following the completion of my first master's degree, I spent 10 years working in public relations in the greater Philadelphia area while teaching as an adjunct. Ultimately, I decided to make the shift from working in PR to a full-time professor, but I needed the doctorate degree. I started the Ph.D. program at USF in the fall of 2009, and I completed my Ph.D. under the guidance of Eric Eisenberg (my advisor) and a second master's degree in Management last spring. As a dual-degree seeking student, I spent a lot of time working on projects for the business school as well as my dissertation, which explored how female business owners in public relations communicate their work and personal identities. My current research continues to explore the areas of identity at work and at home (including the ways that individuals hide their identities), gender and organizational communication. While at USF, I taught upper-level public relations courses for the Mass Communications program and I designed a course in USF's MBA program called Communication Skills. My degrees and work at USF prepared me for my current position as an Assistant Professor at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ. I was hired to teach in the department's new master's program in Business Communication. The combination of practical experience in business (including owning a business and 10 years of communication experience) combined with my degrees in public relations, management and (saved the best for last) the doctorate in organizational communications provide me with both practical examples and academic qualifications to enhance my teaching and research at Rider University. Currently, I am teaching a course in the undergraduate public relations program and two courses in the master's program called "Information Gathering and Analysis." On a personal note, my daughter Elise, who was born during my time at USF, is getting so big and learning so many new words every day. Of course, my favorite is "Mommy." It's hard to believe that she will be 2 on October 14th. She is a joy, but also keeps us moving. She is very curious and loves to explore the many new closets and cabinets in our new home in NJ. My husband, daughter and I moved from Florida to NJ in August, and we are still settling into our new home, which includes a fenced yard for our wonderful dog and wandering child. We love that our home is within walking distance to historic Washington's Crossing, a short 8 minute drive to Rider and relatively short commutes to NY or Philadelphia. We look forward to exploring the area more and seeing the beautiful fall leaves very soon. I hope to reconnect with many of my USF friends at NCA. I am scheduled to present at three different forums there, but just as importantly, I look forward to catching up with everyone and learning about their new adventures.

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Polysemy, Plurality, & Paradigms: The Quixotic Quest for Commensurability of Ethics and Professionalism in the Practices of Law By Eric Engle According to many, the legal industry is currently suffering from a professionalism problem. The following dissertation is a response to the question, “What can be done about incivility in the practice of law in Florida?” It begins by exploring the literature examining ethics and professionalism, specifically focusing on the role communication plays in the production and reification of patterns of meaning and action. After contextualizing the professionalism problem socio-culturally and historically, the dissertation next provides an overview of some relevant aspects of the Coordinated Management of Meaning (a theoretical communication framework employed to help make sense of the existing state of affairs) and examines how legal scholars and practitioners can begin to communicate their way out of the problem. Following the literature review, the dissertation outlines four research questions and addresses the study’s use of the World Café design principles and methodology for examining the “professionalism problem.” Finally, the dissertation concludes by relating five key findings as well as addressing five ways in which the research has practical and theoretical implications. In addition to defending my dissertation on October 17, 2013, I am currently employed as a Lecturer in the Communication Department at the University of New Hampshire. I also managed to get two panels accepted for presentation at NCA, 2013. My first panel, "Convene, Commune, Connect, Coordinate: A Panel Discussion on the Application of CMM (the Coordinated Management of Meaning) in the Context of Law" is scheduled for and my second panel, "Toward a More Civil Union: Connecting Communication, Ethics, and Professionalism in the Practice of Law" is scheduled for Sunday. In embracing CMM to analyze the conversational patterns and practices of law as they relate to ethics and professionalism, this research theoretically aligns primarily with the sociocultural tradition with some critical and cybernetic overtones. While there are many ways one might examine the professionalism problem, CMM offers an exemplary lens with which to both analyze the problem and proffer a discursive pathway out of the problem. From a communication perspective, the problematics of ethics and professionalism in the practice of law can be understood to originate in the inherent polysemy of language and the incommensurability of moral orders deriving from alternative forms of communication.

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…Settling in with the Chair (from page 1) What is lovely is that I get more time to talk to my colleagues, I’m meeting many people around the university, and I’m much more in tune with the university as an organization. I find myself quite interested now in organizational communication, in ways I’ve never been before. (Don’t worry, I’m not writing an organizational autoethnography. Too risky! But for an ethnographer, this position is a gold mine!) When I’m not meeting with students, colleagues, and various administrators, I spend most of my time on e-mail. Now I get to define doing email as part of my chair work, rather than how I used to see it: “wasting time and not doing my real work.” As well, I get to take a front seat as our outstanding academic and collegial department continues to flourish. So what have we accomplished since January 2013 when I officially became chair? You’ll see many individual accomplishments of faculty, students, and alumni all through this newsletter. Rather than repeating those here, I will point to a few of the more general ones and you can read the specifics on other pages. We recruited a top-notch group of new graduate students. We had a terrific orientation week, thanks to GCA, Jane Jorgenson, David Purnell, and many other folks. We said our goodbyes and well wishes to those who graduated and left for positions in all kinds of wonderful places. We said hello to our new faculty member, Keith Berry, and welcomed Chris McRae to his new position as a tenure track assistant professor and David Purnell as a visiting assistant professor. We’ve spruced up the place a bit, with new paint, new door signs, and a comfortable new Tea Room where we can spend time together informally. As well, our post-doc, Serap Erincin, has arrived from The Department of Performance Studies at NYU. She gave a lecture in October and is teaching a course in “Performing Stories of Self” to our undergraduates. As well, Lisa Tillmann will join us in February 2014 to give the fourth alumni lecture. I’ve had a lot of help as chair. Lori Roscoe (Associate Chair) has systematized the scheduling, and I appreciate her efforts in that regard. We have a new governance document, thanks to Michael LeVan and his committee. We’re working on revamping the undergraduate program and starting to think about a new MA program under the leadership of Jane Jorgenson (Graduate Director) and Michael LeVan (Undergraduate Director). As well, Heidi Paintner has taken over as Academic Program Specialist in charge of assisting with the graduate program and Anne Copeland continues to make us laugh and be our point person as Academic Program Specialist in charge of assisting with the undergraduate program. While Sheri Broner, our office manager, has been on extended leave, Heidi and Anne have held down the fort admirably, with the help of Ivan Salazar (work/study student) and Brad Stager, our staff assistant, who takes care of our website, photo, and video needs. Thanks to Brad, Lisa Spinazola, and Michael Abrahams for putting together this newsletter. We have an amazingly enthusiastic department and I appreciate how everyone pitches in with good cheer. Given all this help, I’ve managed to continue doing some research on my interview project with Holocaust survivors and with Tony Adams and Stacy Holman Jones on our books on autoethnography. I’ve also continued teaching and working with graduate students, always the most rewarding part of this job. What a wonderful life we have as academics. The department is doing well. Communication faculty and students are conducting important research, winning awards, and teaching and learning with passion. The spirit is upbeat though public support of education has diminished severely and we have had to rely increasingly on private resources. We hope that you will consider donating to our department. Just go to our homepage at communication.usf.edu and click on the “Make a Gift” button on the left side. There you will find a number of funds to which you might want to contribute. The Communication Research Fund supports student and faculty research, including student travel to academic conferences, equipment needed for research projects, and expenses connected with bringing in visiting scholars (such as the annual alumni lecturer). The Allen

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Grazier Fund contributes each year to the expenses connected with bringing in a lecturer for Communication Day. The Arthur Bochner Ph. D. Student Award Fund and James Popovich Endowed Scholar funds provide annual awards to outstanding students, and the Communication Operating Fund is a general department fund. Thank you in advance for your generosity. We hope to see many of you at our annual NCA party in Washington DC. Our reception will take st place on Thursday night, November 21 from 6-8 (reserved solely for our faculty, students, and alumni from 6-7) at Lillies Restaurant and Bar, two tenths of a mile from the conference hotel. Please see the invitation with directions on page 45. Please also come and visit us in Tampa! We’d love to see you. I’ll let you try out the chair in the big office, and tell you stories about the university. Anne Copeland will no doubt have you in stitches during your visit.

…Checking in with Ken (from page 1) The rest were conducted with an interesting mix of Skype, Face Time, and the telephone, depending on what was available and working well each week. He also gave a talk, "The Past as Prologue: Applied Communication in the 21st Century," to the USM Communication Department’s faculty and graduate student colloquium. In May he traveled to his doctoral alma mater, the University of Denver, where he spoke on “Studying Interpersonal Dialogue” and met with undergraduate and graduate classes. He also received two prestigious awards since retiring. At the Southern States Communication Association convention in April in Louisville, he received the Michael M. Osborn Teacher-Scholar Award, which “honors SSCA members who have balanced professional careers, having achieved excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service.” We were also notified that he will be receiving USF’s prestigious Distinguished Service Award, which is conferred by USF on one faculty member each year in recognition of a career of outstanding service to USF, their profession, and the community. The award will be presented later in the fall semester. In the spring, he traveled twice to the Florida Keys and once to Chicago and then on to Door County, Wisconsin. This summer, he reports camping at Lake Conasauga, the highest lake in Georgia, doing some tubing on the Cartecay River that flows by his and his wife’s cabin in the north Georgia mountains, drinking some wine, and generally enjoying retired life. He’s also had to get used to having a Medicare card.

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Bits and bytes Department Events The Department of Communication held its second retreat of the academic year on February 22nd, 2013, as a follow-up to its initial retreat on October 26th, 2012. In the first retreat, we discussed the history of the department; how we see ourselves as a community, professionals, and colleagues; and what our opportunities and challenges are as we move forward together to create a workplace and a legacy we desire. The second retreat followed up on these ideas. We clarified further our thoughts on who we are; how we fit into the profession, university, and community; who and where we want to be in five years; and set forth goals to achieve. Edgardo Valentin received the USF Staff Senate Quiet Quality Award on Feb. 13, 2013 in recognition of his dedication to co-workers, faculty, and students. The award was presented at a reception in the Communication Department, where we also wished him well in his new position as Office Manager in the Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies. Edgardo is part of our department family and he has a standing invitation to all departmental activities. We will miss his daily presence. Amy Kilgard, of San Francisco State University, presented her solo performance, Triskaidekaphobia: 13 Consumer Tragedies, at 8pm on Friday, January 11, 2013 in CIS 3020. This show was a performance ethnography that explores, critiques, and questions our practices and aesthetics of consumerism. She also conducted a workshop in Chris McRae's Performance Lab class. Erin Scheffels has been appointed Chief Steward of the Graduate Student Union. She will work with other departmental stewards across campus to increase membership and keep our union strong. If you are interested in joining GAU, please contact Erin to sign up. Dues are 1% of wages and well worth our union's accomplishments. Issues of importance for our next contract include health benefits and coverage for marital partners, cost of living as related to graduate assistant wages and travel funding, and any other issues our members find important. If anyone has suggestions, questions, or concerns that should be addressed as we bargain for our next contract, please bring those issues to Erin and she will share them with the bargaining committee and union leadership.

Graduate students land teaching positions: Allison Weidhaas has accepted a tenure-track position with Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ in the Communication and Journalism Department, and she will teach in the university's new Business Communication MA program. Chris Patti has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Communication at Appalachian State for Fall 2013. David Purnell has accepted a one-year visiting position in USF's Department of Communication. Jacob Jenkins has accepted a tenure-track position in Communication at California State University at Channel Islands. Patrick Dillon has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Communication at University of Memphis for Fall 2013. Department faculty and alumni received a number of significant awards at the Southern States Communication Association convention in Louisville. Ken Cissna received the prestigious Michael M. Osborn Teacher-Scholar Award, which “honors SSCA members who have balanced professional careers, having achieved excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service.” Jane Jorgenson received the Gender Studies Scholar of the Year from the Gender Studies Division. In addition, two doctoral alumni won important association-wide awards: Emmett Winn (Ph. D. 1999; Professor and Associate Provost, Auburn University) received the T. Earle Johnson–Edwin Paget Distinguished Service Award, which “honors SSCA members who, through their service

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and leadership to the Association and the profession, have made significant contributions and merit recognition,” and Michael Arrington (Ph. D., 2002, Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky) received the John I. Sisco Excellence in Teaching Award, which “honors SSCA members who have consistently demonstrated excellence in teaching communication throughout their academic careers.” All of these awards have been won by departmental members previously: The Osborn TeacherScholar Award was won by Art Bochner in 2008. Previous departmental winners of the Gender Studies Scholar include Elizabeth Bell (2006) and Navita Cummings James (1991) as well as Marsha Vanderford (1996) and Carol Jablonski (1993), both of whom are no longer with the Department. Ken Cissna received the Distinguished Service award in 2007, and Marsha Vanderford was the inaugural winner of the Sisco award in 1994, with Elizabeth Bell winning it in 2007. The John I. Sisco Excellence in Teaching Award was named for John Sisco, now retired, who served on our faculty for many years, including as chair. One of our doctoral candidates and two of our recent graduates have articles featured in the April 2013 edition of College Teaching: Kristen Blinne's commentary, "Start with the Syllabus: HELPing Learners Learn Through Class Content Collaboration,” and Patrick Dillon's and Jacob Jenkins's essay, “Improving Students' Formal Writing: The IDOL Writing Device." Mariaelena Bartesaghi received the Teacher of the Year Award from the Florida Communication Association at its convention in Orlando. Matt Brooks (Ph. D., 2007) received the Community Endowed Teaching Chair in Fine Arts award from Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, Florida. He will be formally presented with the “Golden Medallion for Teaching Excellence” at the annual Golden Medallion Endowed Teaching Chair Breakfast and Faculty Meeting in August. The Award provides a three-year stipend that allows the recipient to pursue a project that improves instruction or enhances professional development at IRSC. Brooks’s project seeks to spark discussion about involving social media in pursuing general education learning outcomes. Specifically, he will be hosting a series of TED events that culminates in IRSC’s own TEDx conference built around the topic “Sustaining Public Dialogue: Evolving General Education Learning Outcomes in and through Social Media.” Brooks is an associate professor in the Department of English, Communication, and Modern Languages and Director of the Center for Media and Journalism Studies at IRSC. Ken Cissna, Carolyn Ellis, and Art Bochner have been selected as three of the outstanding, senior scholars who will be participating in this year’s NCA Scholars' Office Hours program at the National Communication Association convention. These sessions are intended to facilitate networking between budding scholars and more established scholars by providing a space for one-on-one interactions. Rachel Dubrofsky and Ambar Basu have been promoted to Associate Professors and granted tenure at USF. Congratulations Ambar and Rachel! Rachel Dubrofsky was invited to join an impressive group of scholars to speak at the Frontiers of New Media Symposium held at the University of Utah in September 2013 on the topic “The Beginning and End(s) of the Internet: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Future of Cyber-Utopia.” Her presentation will look at the unique implications for the surveillance of gendered and racialized bodies with the rise in social media. Click here for more information. Carolyn Ellis was awarded the Legacy Lifetime Award by the National Communication Association, Ethnography Division (Nominated by five members and honors a person whose work has exemplified living "the ethnographic life" and whose “ways of performing have consistently and passionately personified the spirit of the division.”) She will receive this award at the NCA National Convention in November 2013.

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Carolyn Ellis was awarded “Best Edited Collection of 2013” for the Handbook of Autoethnography (coauthored with Stacy Holman Jones and Tony Adams) by the National Communication Association, Ethnography Division. She will receive this award at the NCA National Convention in November 2013. Carolyn Ellis has been awarded the William R. Jones Outstanding Mentor Award by the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program and Florida Education Fund (FEF). The McKnight Doctoral Fellowship program is designed to address the under-representation of African American and Hispanic faculty at colleges and universities in the state of Florida by increasing the pool of citizens qualified with Ph.D. degrees to teach at the college and university levels. Established in 1984, the FEF's McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program has increased the number of African Americans who have earned Ph.D.'s in historically underrepresented, crucial disciplines where African Americans have not historically enrolled and completed degree programs. The USF Communication Department has had five McKnight Fellows: Deborah Austin, Michael Arrington, Nigel Malcolm, Chris Patti, and currently Lorraine Monteagut. Art Bochner was presented with this mentoring award in 1995, nominated by Deborah Austin. Carolyn was nominated by Chris Patti Jacob Jenkins has received USF's Golden Bull Award for 2013. This award is described as "One of USF's highest honors given annually to undergraduate and graduate students who encompass the spirit of the institution and have demonstrated its values. Recipients must exemplify exceptional leadership and service to the university and the community." Jacob's name will be added to the "Leaders of Distinction" wall within USF's Marshall Center. Congratulations Jacob! Undergraduates Warren Buchholz, John Lawson, Jose Rodriguez-Rivera, and Tyler Sloan, from Chris McRae's Communication as Performance Lab class, presented on their semesterlong creative research project, Following Fairytale Fragments, at the 2013 USF Office for Undergraduate Research Undergraduate Research and Arts Colloquium. Aisha Durham was a featured panelist for the “Hip Hop Literacies: Pedagogies for Social Change” and for the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly Research (NCTEAR) conference at The Ohio State University, February 15-17, 2013. The panel and NCTEAR keynote conversation highlighted hip hop as pedagogy and as an interdisciplinary field of study as well as a critical tool in contemporary freedom movements. Our very own Heidi Paintner has been selected to serve on one of the College of Arts and Sciences three Strategic Committees concerned with staffing and business process efficiencies. The other two are about faculty assignments and evaluation and about communication of the value of what we do to diverse audiences. This is quite an honor for Heidi and we are very proud of her.

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On Institutional Memory By Ron Spinka Sometimes fate smiles on us. That moment occurred in the summer of 1978 when Department Chair John (Jack) Sisco approached me in the hallway on the third floor of Cooper Hall (the Communication Department’s former home) and asked if I would consider becoming a member of the graduate class for the fall semester. That meant a scramble to assemble documents, take the GRE, and get my life in order to begin what was a critical step in my life. The decision to join the program led to a successful career in communication and a lifelong affection for our department. Perhaps you have seen me walking around the department, usually in a suit. You may have heard my name, Ron Spinka, mentioned in passing. At this point, I consider myself the department’s institutional memory. This year will mark my 33rd year as an adjunct. That’s right – 33 years – proving there is academic life after graduate school. The focus in the department in 1978 was rhetoric, organizational communication, and communication theory -- with a preference for quantitative research. Graduate coursework even included classes in linguistics. My interest was communication theory and rhetoric, primarily shaped by my faculty mentor, Keith Jensen. Tragically, Keith died of a heart attack at the end of my degree program. But his impact motivated me to extend the theory I had learned to investigate its applicability in management of large-scale public policy issues. That opportunity presented itself when I was hired by the Florida Electric Power Coordinating Group, Inc., a statewide association of electric utilities (investor-owned, municipal and electric cooperatives). The position was responsible for media, community, and member relations activities. As the Communication Director, I also served as spokesman for the Florida electric utility industry and was able to use experience from my first career as a newspaper reporter for the St. Petersburg Times to assist in communicating with media across the state. Throughout my 16-year tenure in that position, a number of complex and challenging issues arose for the industry -- acid rain, mercury contamination of the Florida Everglades, electric and magnetic field effects from power lines, electric system reliability, global warming, and environmental externalities. The industry was at the center of a maelstrom of concerned, learned, and active stakeholders -- media, governmental agencies, scientific groups, legislators, environmentalists, and the public. The challenge was to develop communications programs to credibly present the industry’s position on these controversial issues to a variety of audience types through numerous channels in a variety of contexts. At the time, there was a great deal of attention on issues management theory and life-cycle models of issue development. The models suggested that issues go through predictable stages – from early grassroots action, next to media attention and promotion, and last into regulatory or legislative forums and law-making. I soon found out that communication theories I had investigated in graduate school could be applied in meaningful ways to expansive and complex issues. It was fortuitous that the industry leaders had progressive attitudes and were open to communication and programs rooted in the public interest. The byproduct of this philosophy was application of forward-thinking approaches to issues. Sociogrammatic analysis was employed to analyze communication networks across media, public groups, and scientific groups to determine how to best reach opinion leaders and agents of change. Drawing from Richard Weaver’s The

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Ethics of Rhetoric, attempts were made to alter specific “god” or “devil” terms used in the communication of controversial issues to more fairly represent the concern. Principles of corporate social responsibility were applied to help the industry add its voice in credible ways to particularly contentious and polarizing issue debates where the industry was seen as contributors to the problem. For a short time, I was asked to write issue white papers or position analyses and take part in industry lobbying efforts in Tallahassee and Washington. Being part of efforts to promote energy conservation, encourage movement towards electric vehicles, and to assist in actions to protect the environment and public were extremely satisfying experiences. Throughout my career in the electric utility industry, I was able to continue my association with the department in an adjunct capacity. Over the years, I have taught almost every class offered in the department, even a basic phonetics class. When asked why I continue to teach, the answer is very simple. How can you beat seeing the light bulb go on in a student’s mind, hearing the genesis of a great idea, experiencing the evolution of a student as a thinker, and bumping into your success stories all over the city, state, and country? Bumping into students has become somewhat of a family joke. Whenever we go out to eat, go shopping, or attend an event, someone will come up and say, “Didn’t I have you for a speech class at USF in _____ (you fill in the year).” My family moans, “Here we go again.” Basic student behavior hasn’t changed much over the years. Technology has become a constant distraction, but has benefitted teaching in numerous ways. It is so much easier to stay in touch and communicate information and expectations. Students can be quite bold, asserting positions in dogmatic and aggressive fashion. It is a teaching opportunity for discussions of invitational rhetoric, principles of argumentation, and ethics of debate. However, the learning and academic readiness seems to have increased. Teaching has been so enjoyable, that I also have taken positions at other academic institutions. Currently, in addition to classes here in Tampa, I also teach for USFSP and have led classes at USF Polytechnic in the past. Two former department graduates, Sharon Occhipinti and Kendall Smith-Sullivan, went on to program director positions at other universities. Both graciously asked that I teach for them. I joined Sharon at Everest University in 1992, and I was named Instructor of the Year in 2002 and 2009. In 2011, I connected with Kendall at South University. During our initial meeting, as we were touring the South campus, we passed the reception desk. The receptionist was a former student who recognized me and spoke highly of how I had changed her perspective on effective communication. Kendall shared that if she had any doubts as to my teaching ability, that response would have removed them. Sadly (for me), Kendall left South to work on her book. In 1995, I left the utility industry and decided to start my own company, Communication Skills & Services. The organization provides strategic communications counsel, communication program planning, training, group facilitation, and writing services. Usually, I am asked to provide speech coaching to senior executives or to assist in developing communication plans or strategies for difficult issues or audiences. CS&S clients have included Deloitte & Touche, U.S. Sugar Corporation, Florida Power & Light Company, Lakeland Electric, AAA Auto Club South, Wal-Mart, American Airlines, and many others. My own family is traceable to USF too. I met my wife, Joan, while I was an undergrad pursuing degrees in psychology and communication. We have been married for 27 years and have two children, Lauren and Robert. Lauren graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Physiology and Kinesiology and is currently completing her master’s in Counseling for Nova Southeastern University. After graduating from UF, she was recruited by Nova to be the Assistant Coach for the women’s rowing team which made it to the NCAA tournament. She returned to Tampa and now is the head coach for women’s rowing at Plant High School. Robert graduated this summer from USFSP with a BA in criminology. He is applying to the Police Academy and wants to work in law enforcement.

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At the start of this article, I mentioned my long-standing affection for the department. That is rooted in the quality of the faculty, staff, and students who decide to call our department home. I’ll forever be tied to Michael Garko; we were co-winners of the Popovich Award for outstanding graduate student. Ken Cissna remains a long-time friend; I helped move him into his house when he joined the department. Keith Jensen, my mentor who died too young, keeps me rooted in scholarly attitude. There have been numerous changes in faces across the years (too many to name), but one thing remains constant – good people, good minds, and good souls who create an atmosphere of comfort and care. I am still in touch with former graduate students, still hear from former students, and still run into department graduates all over the country. When I mention to my corporate clients that I teach at USF, they no longer think that it stands for the University of Southern Florida. I am proud of my affiliation with the university and department. And I am thankful to all of the chairs of the department who have given me the continuing opportunity to say I belong here.

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Improv@USF is the department’s official USF student organization within Student Government. By Nathan Hodges “I’m gonna’ grab some tuna before we do this?” Nick says to me as I follow him to his office. His office door, along with the 3rd floor of the st CIS Building is plastered with posters advertising the 1 annual Tampa Improv Festival (organized by Nick) and Post Dinner Conversation’s upcoming shows at Beef O’ Brady’s and Tampa Pitcher Show. “Sure, let’s head over to Boar’s Head and chat,” I say. “What better place to talk about play than at the business building?” Nick Riggs, a third-year Ph.D. student in communication who teaches courses on communication and love, public speaking, performance studies, and relationships on film, serves as faculty advisor to Improv@USF, the student improv comedy organization he helped found in 2012. He’s also the mastermind behind Post Dinner Conversation (PDC), a nonprofit improv company that grew out of Kari Goetz’s single-semester improvisation lab and was recently voted “Best Local Improv Troupe” in Creative Loafing’s Best of the Bay Reader’s Poll. USF’s Kingpin of Play continues to build his improv empire with shows all over the Tampa Bay area and improv workshops that he and Improv@USF President and Post Dinner Conversation co-founder Hannah Prince facilitate across campus. “Technically, we won ‘Best Local Imrov Troupe,’ he tells me. “There was a typo on the actual award. We’re all really proud of that.” While we walk over to the business building, Nick chats about his dissertation, an auto/ethnographic project with Improv@USF that takes a closer look at what happens when learning spaces oriented toward play open up in structured academic settings.

“I’ve been thinking through Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of chronotopes and working with Leslie Baxter’s relational dialectics paradigm and finding new ways to incorporate communication theory into the workshop games I develop for PDC and the club. Recently I’ve developed what the players and I call ‘The Cog’ which stands for ‘Conversation of Gestures,’ language that I borrow from George Mead. It’s a structured performative installment to give company players a way to hone their skills, get direct feedback and make immediate adjustments to their performance decisions and style of play.”

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Nick’s academic versatility moves me from theoretical vertigo to direct application in the same sentence. “It’s been really effective to help people think more constructively about how to listen and how to follow fellow players with more comic agility. As far as I know, you won’t find anything like it at any other improv training program in the country. It’s our special sauce.” “Sounds tasty!” I say as we both grab some food and sit down at a table to chat, “So, what’s new this year with Improv@USF?” “Our numbers this year are incredible. We’ve moved our Friday meetings to the Marshall Student Center just to hold everybody. We’ve got over 100 students representing over 15 disciplines signed up for the club this year—which is pretty staggering considering that a year ago there was only 7 of us. Now we’re meeting 3 times a week and play way more games than we used to play. To recruit new folks and start building an audience we decided to run the first USF Improv League where students form their own teams and compete in weekly shows held in the residence halls. The resident director of Maple and Juniper-Popular and his staff has been working with us to give students who live on campus an alternative to going out Friday nights that’s fun and worth staying home to watch. We call them “Showdowns” because teams challenge each other to games and the audience gets to vote on the winner. The teams try to get as many points as possible to win prizes donated by local companies. The first one drew about a 60 person audience.” “Cool! It’s like ‘Whose Line is It Anyway?’ but the points matter,” I interject. “Yeah, so we’re doing this to build up a fan base and to encourage solidarity among team members. There are 15 students brand new to the club this year that are playing on teams and, honestly, they’re really impressive. I wasn’t that good when I started.” I ask him to tell me more about the performances and the behind-the-scenes improv workshops that he’s been conducting, referencing the workshop he and Hannah brought to my public speaking class the previous semester oriented towards improving students speaking skills. “We’ve visited several classes to provide improv workshops—public speaking, women and communication, persuasion—and we’ve done workshops with the USF Honors Living Learning Community. This semester, Improv@USF is helping the Psychology department recreate pictures of alcohol use that they use in their perception studies. We’ll also be involved in the ‘Write Love on Her Arms Event’ as concert emcees and working with PRIDE in the spring to produce a drag show. And we’re hosting the first annual USF Improv Festival in the Marshall Center Ballroom Tuesday of Halloween week to help promote the Tampa Improv Festival and bring improv comedy to a larger student audience. Troupes from all over the city will be there.” As he looks at his watch I know time is running short. He says he has to go prepare for his evening Performance class. Looking down at my list of questions I move to the one I’m most curious in hearing the answer to. “So, what does improv teach us about communication?”

USF Communication Rapport

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Taking a pause from eating his tuna sandwich he thinks about the question and with a mouthful responds. “That’s a pretty big question. I think you can think about improv as an art of communication. As a way of learning how to communicate and express yourself, I’ve observed that doing and talking about improv is really a way of negotiating the depths of imagination dialogically with others. Most everyone longs to be understood—especially in college—and improv comedy gives people access to moments of confirmation and affirmation through creative and collaborative expression. I mean, there are plenty of moments when you don’t get a laugh or you make a bad decision and the scene doesn’t go anywhere, but those usually lead to some kind of conversation after the fact that’s really a conversation about communication itself. I guess I think of improv as a clever way of getting people to reflect on the way they interact with others, sort of a short-route toward metacommunication—something a lot of students struggle with as they hide behind their cell phones during ‘awkward’ moments of their day. In a lot of ways, learning how to talk about talking can be constructive and cathartic. Improv definitely gets you to put your phone away and meet another person where they’re at, somewhere between you, face-to-face.” “And the group itself? What does the group do for students?” I ask as we stand up to leave. “There are folks in both Improv@USF and Post Dinner Conversation who may not be living in Tampa anymore if it wasn’t for the communal vibe that’s developed over the past year. We spend almost 20 hours a week together practicing, performing, and just hanging out. We go out to eat a lot, talk about classes and family, even celebrate holidays and other occasions together. These are the sort of students that never would have joined a fraternity or sorority, or the ones who bounced back and forth between student organizations that they were only half committed to— folks who really love to laugh and wanted an excuse to do it on a daily basis. I don’t think they were looking to be part of a group, per say, but were glad to have found their way into one. The organization of both groups provides all of us with a company to work for, a community to commit to, and at times, a family to rely on. Nick leaves me with a free ticket to the next Long Form improv show at Tampa Pitcher Show as we walk back to CIS and part ways. Both Post Dinner Conversation and Improv@USF provide more information about their shows and practices on Facebook and their websites, including information about the USF and Tampa Improv Festival, awards, videos, pictures, and other creative projects they’re involved in.

PS – Nick Riggs is organizing a new student group called "No Space Production Team" to be an official committee of Improv@USF that helps PDC and Improv@USF promote and produce improv performance in all capacities. We're trying to help students build their professional portfolio and gain experience working on a marketing team as they help us make more space to play and build an audience. Applications are open to any undergrad with prominent skills and curiosity in promotion, design, collaboration and marketing (including film production and advertising). Meetings are bimonthly and begin next semester. Anyone interested should send a resume and cover letter to [email protected] before Dec 15th.

USF Communication Rapport

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USF Communication Rapport

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